Three ways of sabbath-ing

I think that sabbath is best thought of in three ways. As I reflect in preparation for a workshop the following three aspects provide shape and understanding.

1. The keeping of sabbath as a day of rest. Bonnie Thurston asserts "One of the marks of divinity is that God knows when to stop working, when to rest, when to enjoy what has been created by work..."
2. The doing of sabbath as a practice, is as Norman Wirzba suggests "the focus and culmination of a life that is daily and practically devoted to honoring God, the source of all our delight..."
3. The being of sabbath is even more core. Marva Dawn suggest Sabbath is a corrective. "The only way to stop our chronic need to work in our own way and with our sense of hurry is to stop, to cease, to spend time immersed in God's enfolding devotion to us and in the triune provision of whatever we need in order to do the work God really wants us to do in God's manner and cadence."

I think the being of sabbath is the key or cure to a very human condition. What Marva Dawn points to is a fundamental shift from self-sufficiency and "I" centreness to a focusing on God. Bonnie Thurston is beautifully blunt ... "beneath the complaint that we are too busy, that we don't have enough time, is the pride of attainment. I'm so busy may well be a way of saying see how needed I am, see how important I am".

Bernard of Clairvaux, a signficant medieval writer on the spiritual life, basically was frustrated with conduit thinking. He saw people loving and serving God and others as channels, which is living life in a narrow way, where love pours out as fast as it rushes in. This is not life in all its fullness or abundant life. He suggested that love and service needs a reservoir and outpouring is out of fullness and surplus. "We have all too few such reservoirs in the church at present, than we have canals in plenty." Notice that a reservoir life is more focused on primarily receiving from God in order to overflow over others, but people frequently merely have a survival giving from the limited resources of a stand pipe or conduit.

It's still a challenge as I face down these conclusions! (see Kino's Journey episode 10 notes for issues of identity in what you do and others needs - the picture is Haji from Blood+ , a vampire anime, which is particularly appropriate for lives lived in the absence of sabbath )